
GopyrightN - 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



GOAT 
ISLAND 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2010 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/goatislandOOport 



GOAT ISLAND 



'--;: Basil Han 



^3C0 



52944 



orar y »f Congress 

>', , f -?Plf S Keceivfd 

SEP 28 1900 

Cop) right entry 



SECOND COPY. 

Delivered to 

ORDIR DIVISION, 
OCT 18 1900 



I have endeavored, in this article, 
to bring together a number of the 
opinions that have been expressed 
about Goat Island, in its various as- 
pects. These expressions are mainly 
those of persons to whom the world 
has given a hearing, because of their 
abilities and prominence in their re- 
spective spheres. And joined to, 
and interwoven with these expres- 
sions, I have added such a chronol- 
ogy of the Island as I have been able 
to collect. 



%Xi!> 



Copyright 

By Peter A. Porter 

1900. 



NIAGARA. 



Author Unknown. 



Great Fall, all hail: 

Canst thou unveil 

The secrets of thy birth; 

Unfold the page 

Of each dark age, 

And tell the tales of eartli ? 

When I was born 

The stars of morn 

Together sang — 'twas day: ' 

The sun unrolled 

His garb of gold 

And took his upward way. 

He mounted high 

The eastern sky 

And then looked down on earth; 

And she was there, 

Young, fresh, and fair, 

And I, and all, had birth. 

The word of power 
Was spoke that hour : 
Dark chaos felt the shock; 
Forth sprung the light, 
Burst day from night, 
Up leaped the living rock. 

Back fell the sea 

The land was free, 

And mountain, hill, and plain 

Stood forth to view, 

In emerald hue, — 

Then sang the stars amain. 

And I — oh thou: 

Who taught me how 

To hymn thy wondrous love 

Deign to be near 

And calm my fear, 

O Holy one above. 



I caught the word 
Creation heard, , 
And by thy power arose; 
His goodness gave 
The swelling wave 
That ever onward flows. 

By his command 

The rainbow spanned 

My forehead and his will 

Evoked the cloud 

My feet to shroud, 

And taught my voice to trill. 

And who is he 

That questions me ? 

From whom hast thou thy form, 

Thy life, thy soul ? 

My waters roll 

Through day, night, sunshine, storm. 

In grateful praise 

To him, I raise 

A never ceasing song 

To that dread one, 

To whom stars, sun, 

Earth, ocean, all belong. 

Thou too adore 

Him ever more 

Who gave thou all thou hast; 

Let time gone by 

In darkness die 

Deep buried in the past. 

And be thy mind 

To him inclined 

Who made earth.'heaven and thee— 

Thy every thought 

To worship wrought,— 

This lesson learn of me. 



GOAT ISLAND. 



Goat Island, as the words are ordinarily used, means the group 
of islands and islets situated between the American and Canadian 
rapids, at the Terge of and just above the Falls of Niagara. 

This group consists of Goat Island, which is half a mile long 
and a quarter of a mile broad, running to a point at its eastern 
end, comprising 70 acres; and 16 other islands or masses of rock, 
varying in size from an average of 400 feet to 10 feet in diameter. 

Five of these islands and the Terrapin rocks are connected 
with Goat Island by bridges. Many years ago the two small 
islands above Green island were also thus accessible. As Goat 
Island divides the Falls themselves, so it divides with them the 
interest of visitors; for it is the one spot at Niagara. If only 
one point here were to be visited, that one spot, beyond all ques- 
tion, should be Goat Island. 

From it, with the one exception of the grand general view to 
be obtained from the Canada shore, are to be seen all the best 
views of Niagara, including both falls, both rapids, the gorge 
and the rainbows. And of Niagara, the Terrapin rocks, access- 
ible only from Goat Island, are the scenic, as they are the geo- 
graphical center, its very epitome. To Goat Island have been 
applied numerous epithets, among them the Temple of Nature, 
the Sacred Isle, the Fairy Isle, the Enchanted Isle, the Isle of 
Beauty, the Shrine of the Deity, and less poetic, but perhaps 
most truthful of all, the words quoted on the title page. " the 
most interesting spot in all America." 



6 Goat Island. 

" It is interesting to consider that many of the trees now 
standing on Goat Island looked down on the first recorded visit 
of a white man to the Falls, and have remained the only living 
witnesses of those important scenes in the drama of European 
conquest in America, which were enacted at this all-important 
portage in the great water route to the heart of the continent. 
The savage chiefs and conquering generals, the tribes and armies 
that moved along this well-known track from Ontario, and 
launched their vessels on the river above Goat Island, are gone, 
but the trees that shadowed the flashing stream still remain to 
make the past real and bring vividly to memory our wonder- 
ful progress." 

The Island embraces over two-thirds of the acreage, and by 
reason of its location is by far the most important part, of the 
New York State Reservation at Niagara. 

" It is a paradise; I do not believe there is a spot in the world 
which within the same space comprises so much grandeur and 
beauty." This expression by a Boston divine, 70 years ago, is 
but a condensation of what many others since then have verbally 
expressed, in longer, but certainly in no more forcible, words. 

The purchase of this property by the Empire State in 1885, was 
the tangible fulfillment of the following opinion, uttered half a 
century before, that " Niagara does not belong to Canada or 
America. Such spots should be deemed the property of civilized 
mankind; and nothing should be allowed to weaken their efficacy 
on the tastes, the morals and the enjoyments of all men." 

It is a group, or speaking collectively, a spot, wondrous in 
many aspects; wondrous from its location, wondrous from its 
geology, wondrous from its botany, wondrous from its scenery, 
and famous, if not wondrous, from its history. 



ITS GEOLOGY. 

During the last 75 years geologists have written a great deal 
about Niagara, and from it speculatists have deduced theories 
as to the antiquity of the earth, trying to prove 

" That He who made it, and revealed its date 
To Moses, was mistaken in its age." 

In early geological days this entire section was covered by the 
salt waters of the Devonian seas, which is proved by the shells 
of the Conularia Niagarensis, found in the shale underlying Goat 
Island and along the gorge; this shale having once been the 
muddy bottom of these seas, and this shell being found only in 

salt water. 

At a later geological period, on top of what is now this shale, 
at the bottom of a warm ocean, still covering all this land, grew 
a vast, thick and solid bed of coral, of which ancient life the 
Niagara limestone of today is a monument. 

Subsequently these two ancient and contiguous sea bottoms, 
then solid stone, were uplifted and by the configuration of the 
earth hereabouts the original Niagara river was formed. In 
general terms its course was similar to that of the present river 
(though its volume was not as great) as far north as the Whirl- 
pool, from whence it ran, in a broadening channel, to St. Davids, 
westerly from its present outlet; and prior to the coming of the 
ice age it had cut this channel back certainly to the Whirlpool, 
and perhaps even farther south. 

Next came the glacial period, when this part of the country 
was enveloped with a covering of ice, (working down from the 
northeast) similar to that now covering Greenland, though hav- 



8 Goat Island. 

ing a depth of perhaps a mile or more. This ice age, as approxi- 
mately determined, lasted 50,000 years and closed about 200,000 
years ago. 

This ice sheet as it moved forward and southward broke off 
all the projecting points of rock, and scraped all the rocks them- 
selves bare. Its presence and power are attested by the scratch- 
ings and markings on the smoothed surfaces of the top layer 
of rock wherever it is laid bare today, as far south as the Ohio 
river, and is apparent on Goat Island. This ice sheet brought 
down in its course not only boulders from the far north and 
northeast, but its own vast accumulations and scrapings and 
ebrasions, which we call " drift," it being of a marine derivation ; 
and with this drift the ice sheet filled up (and with its enormous 
weight pressed compactly) all valleys, gorges and indentations 
of the earth in its course, among them the old outlet or bed of 
the Niagara river from St. Davids to the Whirlpool. 

The sectional view of Goats Island's rocky substrata shows 
what enormous grinding force must have been exerted on the 
top rock above the present western end of Goat Island, (for of 
course there was no gorge west of the Island then), so much of 
the limestone having been gouged out by the ice. In this ex- 
cavated cavity, drift was deposited by the ice. Many of the 
boulders brought here in the ice age, carried perhaps hundreds 
of miles, have been collected in this section and used in the con- 
struction of the handsome stone bridges that have been built 
on the Reservation, on the main shore opposite Goat Island. 

On the recession of the ice sheet a second Niagara river came 
into existence. 

The weight of this vast ice sheet had canted or tilted the land ^o 
the northeast, so that at its recession the waters of the present 
three great northern lakes flowed east by the Ottawa and later, 




i 80 FT. >< 80 







i'ilii:! 1 !,;.;'. ..•!■■ '! 



FT. ) 






- '•,■' 



Goat Island. 9 

as the land rose, by the Trent valley. As this second Niagara 
river drained only the Lake Erie basin, and as Lake Erie was 
very much smaller than at present, it worked at first in a small 
channel, was of small volume and had but small rock cutting 
power to take up the work or erosive process of the earlier 
Niagara river, which had drained only this same Lake Erie basin. 

This is the period, again referred to, when the present chan- 
nel to the south and west of Goat Island (the Canadian Channel) 
was made. 

It should be noted that the land to the northeast is even yet 
rising, or slowly regaining its former level. This bears on our 
subject in that in time, in the upper lake region the present 
slight slope to the southeast will be entirely overcome, and then 
the waters of the three great upper lakes will find their dis- 
charge to the westward, and the Niagara river will again drain 
only the Lake Erie basin and as a result will enormously de- 
crease in volume. 

If when this time comes the two falls shall have eaten their 
way back past Goat Island they will have left it an elevated 
and isolated Island, or more probably a promontory, whose little 
forest will be perched on a rocky base over 200 feet above the 
rapids, below the fails. The Island itself will be narrower than 
at present on account of the action of the elements. 

If, however, when that time shall come the American Fall 
shall not have receded far (and judging from its recession during 
the last 200 years, it is improbable that it will have), its channel, 
by the great lessening of the flow of the river will become dry 
and Goat Island, and the American channel, between it and the 
main shore, will become once more a part of the American main- 
land, and there will be but one small fall in the Canadian chan- 
nel. 



10 Goat Island. 

The second Niagara river gradually merged itself into a vast 
fresh water lake, formed by the melting ice and heavy rainfalls, 
and covering all the Lake Erie basin, and gradually rose in level 
until it stood fully 100 feet above the present rocky bed of Goat 
Island. 

Its northern boundary was the escarpment or ridge whose 
lowest point was just above the present village of Lewiston, 
which point is 32 feet above the present level of Lake Erie. 
Here the rising waters first broke over the dam and here Niagara 
Falls were born. 

From here they cut their way back to the Whirlpool, for the 
waters found it easier to cut a new channel back through the 
soft rock from this point in the embankment than to scour out 
the old drift filled channel (which was at the very bottom of the 
lake) from the Whirlpool to St. Davids. 

The flow of the lake set towards the falls and brought down 
from the Erie basin fluviate deposits in large amounts during 
the succeeding years, depositing them all along the bottom of 
the lake. It is of these fluviate deposits, consisting of sand, and 
loam (excepting a comparatively small layer of drift next to 
the top rock) that the soil of Goat Island is formed. 

This Goat Island soil, more than any surface in this section is 
the geologists' paradise. While some lands and forests near 
here may not have been cultivated by man, the western end of 
Goat Island is an absolutely unique piece of virgin forest. 

Most of the time it has been, in general terms, inaccessible to 
man; and since accessible by bridges, no cutting of the trees, no 
clearing of the land nor cultivation thereof, no pasturing of 
cattle, in fact no disturbance of the soil, has been permitted. 

Here then is the original drift, with the subsequent overlying 
alluvial deposits and accumulations, undisturbed by man. And 




w 




Q 




O 





g 


H 




« 




< 


« 




w 


t» 



a a 



« 5 



Goat Island. 11 

when, as in this case, in this undisturbed fluviate deposit are 
found fresh water shells, it proves that the Niagara river to-day 
flows through what was once the bottom of a vast fresh water 
lake that covered all this section. 

As the falls cut their way back to the Whirlpool, so their 
height diminished and the level of this fresh water lake fell 
until finally there came a time when the land of what is now 
Goat Island, rose above the waters. That this lake existed at a 
comparatively recent geological period is proven by the fact that 
these shells now found on Goat Island are identical in species 
with those found inhabiting the Niagara river and Lake Ontario 
to-day. According to the most accurate calculation, the concen- 
sus of geological opinion is that 35,000 years have elapsed since 
the falls were at Lewiston, which is seven miles away; and that 
the fluvial deposits on the Island began as soon as the river rose 
over the moraine at the foot of Lake Erie, can scarcely be 
doubted. 

That in 35,000 years there is no specific difference between the 
ancient shells found in the soil of Goat Island, and their existing 
representatives and progeny in this locality is wonderful indeed. 

As geologists differ by thousands of years as to how long it 
took the falls to cut their way from Lewiston ridge to their 
present location it would be impossible to say when in the his- 
tory of this section the waters had so far drained off, that the 
muddy deposits overlying the rocky bed of what is now Goat 
Island, first appeared above the slowly receding waters of the 
lake, unless we adopt some length of time for this work as a 
basis. 

But it is not so difficult, by noting the elevation of the land, 
the trend of the rocks and the depth of the overlying " drift," 
to locate approximately where the falls were when this occurred. 



12 Goat Island. 

At that time, judging from the present levels of the land, the 
falls must have been at a point nearly a mile north of the present 
location of the Horseshoe Fall. And if we accept, as above, one 
foot a year as a fair average estimate of the recession of Niagara 
from Lewiston Heights in the more recent geological time, say 
since the Christian era, it must have been between four and five 
thousand years ago that the soil of Goat Island, then a part of 
the mainland, first appeared; and probably it is nearly as long 
since it became an island. 

In speaking of the recession of Niagara, I refer to the recession 
of the Horseshoe Falls, for they recede several hundred times 
as fast as the American Falls; for in the time that the Horseshoe 
has receded from Prospect Point, at the lower or northern 
edge of the American Falls, across the width of these American 
Falls and across the width of Goat Island to their present posi- 
tion, the American Fall has receded but a very few feet. 

Hence on these deductions, Goat Island has existed as an 
island from about the time of the Flood, or from about 2300 
B.C. 

This proves the statement that " In a scientific sense the 
island is of trifling antiquity, in fact it would be difficult to 
point out in the western world any considerable tract of land 
more recent in its origin." 

As the Canadian Fall is lower in level than the American 
Fall, and as the main body of water and deepest channel apper- 
tain to this Canadian Fall, it is certain that the channel of the 
second Niagara river, which of course, after the lake was drained 
off, was at the lowest level of this old lake bed, was practically 
identical with the Canadian channel of the river just above the 
falls today; that is to the south and west of Goat Island. 










*; 


< 


,; 






£ 


Pi 


3 


^ 




"3 


< 

n 


&• 


I 
















fca 


© 


© 




© 


O 


0) 


e§ 


e 


c 


c 












*d 




Oi 


r 








•o 




OQ 


X 




c 


cu 






a 


s 


m 


,; 


- 


'~ 


u 


j 


C3 


O 


-- 


© 








<1 




h 


*» 


rf 




© 


J 


© 






5 




^ 


K 


o 


- 








2 


►j 


oo 


- 


cd 


? 


5 
- 


- 


5= 


o 


cd 






E 


be 


PS 


= 




= 




w 


p4 


1=1 


X 


/-! 





Goat Island. 13 

Then Goat Island was a part of the American mainland, and 
the rocky bed of the river between the Island and the shore, 
where to-day are the American rapids, was also part of the main- 
land and covered with soil like that on Goat Island. 

Then came a time, perhaps some hundreds of years afterwards, 
when, in the steady rerising of the land at the northeast towards 
the elevation that it had before it was depressed by the ice, the 
outlet of the three upper lakes to the east was cut off; and the 
waters seeking a new outlet found it by what is now the St. 
Clair river into Lake Erie. 

By this means the volume of the Niagara river was suddenly 
and enormously increased. This permanently raised the level 
of the river, and part of this increased volume of water poured 
over the lowest point of the mainland near where Goat Island 
is to-day, this point being in the present channel of the American 
rapids and along the American shore up stream, and this rush 
of waters cut and swept away the soil down to the rock, leaving 
and thus forming Goat Island. 

Probably at the same time and in the same manner were cut 
off and formed the small islands that now lie on both sides of 
Goat Island, though they were at the first larger and being joined 
together, fewer in number than at present. 

Certainly up to the time of the cutting of the channel of th • 
American Fall, the river shore of what is now Goat Island ex- 
tended very much farther up stream, and probably after the 
Island itself was formed its upper end extended much farther 
eastward; for at its eastern end, now called "the parting of the 
waters," a sandy bar extends some hundreds of yards up stream. 
On this bar and south of it the depth of water is to-day less than 
three feet, and in the winter its whole length is covered with 



14 Goat Island. 

ice that lodges there. This entire bar was no doubt at one time 
covered with soil and was a part of Goat Island, the land being 
gradually washed away by the water, aided in its work by frost 
and ice. 

One author says " One of the early chronicles states that the 
island contained 250 acres of land," but I have been unable to 
find that chronicle. 



ITS BOTANY AND FOREST BEAUTY. 

" The groves were God's first temples." 

Sir Joseph Hooker, the noted English botanist, has said that 
he found on Goat Island a greater variety of vegetation within a 
given space than he had found elsewhere in Europe or east of 
the Sierras in America, and Dr. Asa Gray, the greatest of Ameri- 
can Botanists, confirms that statement. 

The man today most familiar with the botany of Goat Island 
is David F. Day, who at the request of the Reservation Commis- 
sioners recently prepared a list of the Flora of the islands and 
Reservation. From his report to them and from his other writ- 
ings, I quote: 

"The vegetation of the island is that which might be expected 
to luxuriate upon a deep calcareous soil, enriched with an abun- 
dance of organic matter." 

"The Flora of Goat Island presents few plants which may be 
called uncommon in Western New York." 

"Goat Island is very rich in the number of its species." 

"Its vernal beauty is attributable, not merely to its variety of 
plants, conspicuous in flower, but also to the extraordinary 




o o 



■5 C a B 



£ a 






T3 
T3 


- 


- 


a 

cS 


JO 


QJ 






H 


3 


- 

w 

A 

CD 


a 

o 




J 

<! 

M 


* J 


CO 

> 


"3 


o 



£> ^ § «! 



14 Goat Island. 

ice that lodges there. This entire bar was no doubt at one time 
covered with soil and was a part of Goat Island, the land being 
gradually washed away by the water, aided in its work by frost 
and ice. 

One author says " One of the early chronicles states that the 
island contained 250 acres of land," but I have been unable to 
find that chronicle. 



ITS BOTANY AND FOREST BEAUTY. 

" The groves were God's first temples." 

Sir Joseph Hooker, the noted English botanist, has said that 
he found on Goat Island a greater variety of vegetation within a 
given space than he had found elsewhere in Europe or east of 
the Sierras in America, and Dr. Asa Gray, the greatest of Ameri- 
can Botanists, confirms that statement. 

The man today most familiar with the botany of Goat Island 
is David F. Day, who at the request of the Reservation Commis- 
sioners recently prepared a list of the Flora of the islands and 
Reservation. From his report to them and from his other writ- 
ings, I quote: 

"The vegetation of the island is that which might be expected 
to luxuriate upon a deep calcareous soil, enriched with an abun- 
dance of organic matter." 

"The Flora of Goat Island presents few plants which may be 
called uncommon in Western New York." 

"Goat Island is very rich in the number of its species." 

"Its vernal beauty is attributable, not merely to its variety of 
plants, conspicuous in flower, but also to the extraordinary 



h 


/ ° 


(D 


y° 


< < 


ii o 


UJ 


o o 




A o 




P o 




a° 




\< 




°\ c 




°? 







£ H 




















"2 


55 




02 




5 


•«! 




™ 




w 


J 










02 




a 




__• 


1-1 




ps 




> 












O 




- 




o 


a 


g 


^j 




q_, 


_ 




















o 








a: 




K 


3 


o 


*o 


z 


fl 


> 


o: 


£1 


o 


■- 


5 


o 




!h 


^ 


eg 


- 


S 


B 


c3 


- 


J 


d 


M 


d 


M 


^ 


£ 


m 


M 










2 


z 






J 
S 


■g 


= 


s 


•s 




T3 


g 


a 


5 


X 










^ 










j 




X 


S 


r 


« 



- H S < 

< _• ~ b 



Goat Island. 1- j 

abundance in which they are produced. Yet it seems; likely that 
there was a time, probably not long ago, when other species of 
plants of great beauty, were common upon the island, but which 
are not now to be found there. It is hardly possible that several 
orchidaceous plants and our three native lilies did not once em- 
bellish its woods and grassy places. Within a little while the 
harebell has gone and the Grass of Parnassus is fast going. This 
is undoubtedly due to careless flower gatherers, who have plucked 
and pulled without stint or reason. The same fate awaits others 
that do so much to beautify the island, unless the wholesale 
spoliation is soon arrested."' 

Mr. Day then suggests that pains be taken to re-establish on 
the Island the attractive plants which it has lost, stating that 
the success of the effort would be entirely certain and thereby 
the pleasure of a visit to the Island would be greatly enhanced 
to many visitors. And he rightly adds "it would surely be a 
step and not an unimportant one in restoring the island to the 
state in which nature left it." 

No doubt many of the seeds from which started the first foliage 
and forest, as well as many succeeding species were planted by 
the river at its inception and in subsequent decreasing levels. 

In another article Mr. Day says: "The tourist who takes enjoy- 
ment in the shadows of a forest, almost unchanged from its 
natural condition, in the stateliness and symmetry of individual 
trees planted by the hand of nature herself: in the beauty and 
fragrance of many species of flowers growing without cultivation 
and in countless numbers; in the ever varying forms and hues 
of foliage and in the constantly shifting panorama of the ani- 
mated creation so near the scenes of human activity and occupa- 
tion and vet so free from their usual effects, will find on the 



16 Goat Island. 

islands which hang upon the brink of the great Cataract, an 
abundant gratification of his tastes and an exhaustless field for 
study." 

"A calcareous soil enriched with an abundance of organic mat- 
ter like that of Goat Island would necessarily be one of great 
fertility. For the growth and sustentation of a forest and of 
such plants as prefer the woods to the openings it would far 
excel the deep and exhaustless alluvians of the prairie states." 

"It would be difficult to find within another territory so re- 
stricted in its limits so great a diversity of trees and shrubs and 
still more difficult to find in so small an area such examples of 
arboreal symmetry and perfection as the island has to exhibit." 

"The island received its Flora from the mainland, in fact the 
botanist is unable to point out a single instance of tree, shrub or 
herb, now growing upon the island not also to be found upon the 
mainland. But the distinguishing characteristic of its flora is 
not the possession of any plant elsewhere unknown, but the 
abundance of individuals and species, which the island displays." 
"There are to be found in Western New York about 170 species 
of trees and shrubs. Goat Island and the immediate vicinity of 
the river near the falls can show of these no less than 140." 
There are represented on the island four maples, three species 
of thorn, two species of ash, and six species, distributed in five 
genera, of the cone-bearing family. The one species of bass- 
wood belonging to the vicinity is also there. 

Mr. Day's catalogue of plants, in his report to the Reservation 
Commissioners, gives 909 species of plants to be found on the 
Eeservation, of which 758 are native and 151 are foreign. Mar- 
garet Fuller Ossoli wrote: "The beautiful wood on Goat Island 
is full of flowers, many of the fairest love to do homage there. 
The wake robin and the May apple are in bloom, the former 



Goat Island. 17 

white, pink, green, purple, copying the rainbow of the falls, and 
fit to make it garland for its presiding Deity when he walks the 
land, for they are of imperial size and shaped like stones for a 
diadem. Of the May apple I did not raise one green tent without 
finding a flower beneath." 

Frederick Law Olmstead wrote: "I have followed the Appal- 
achian chain almost from end to end, and travelled on horse- 
back 'in search of the picturesque,' over 4,000 miles of the most 
promising parts of the continent without finding elsewhere the 
same quality of forest beauty which was once abundant about 
the falls and which is still to be observed on those parts of Goat 
Island where the original growth of trees and shrubs has not 
been disturbed, and where from caviDg banks trees are not now 
exposed to excessive dryness at the root. 

"All these distinctive qualities, the great variety of the in- 
digenous perennials and annuals, the rare beauty of the old 
woods, and the exceeding loveliness of the rock foliage I believe 
to be a direct effect of the falls and as much a part of its maj- 
esty as the mist cloud and the rainbow. They are all as it ap- 
pears to me to be explained by the circumstance that at two 
periods of the year, when the Northern American forest else- 
where is liable to suffer actual constitutional depression, that of 
Niagara is assured against ills and thus retains youthful luxuri- 
ance to an unusual age. 

" First the masses of ice which every winter are piled to a 
great height below the Falls and the great rushing body of ice 
cold water coming from the northern lakes in the spring, pre- 
vent at Niagara the hardship under which trees elsewhere often 
suffer through sudden checks to premature growth. And sec- 
ond, when droughts elsewhere occur, as they do every few years, 
of such severity that trees in full foliage droop and dwindle 



18 Goat Island. 

and even sometimes cast their leaves, the atmosphere at Niagara 
is more or less moistened by the constantly evaporating spray 
of the Falls, and in certain situations bathed by drifting clouds 
of spray." 

In 1785, years before the island was bridged, St. John de 
Crevecoeur in a long letter describing Niagara wrote: " You then 
come to an island covered with trees and shrubs, whose foliage 
and situation have a very happy effect amidst the turbulent 
scenes around." 

And nowhere else is to be found a more beautiful piece of 
virgin forest, where nature protected it from man's encroach- 
ment by its insular position; where a rich alluvial soil furnished 
the trees with food, and nature's bounty provided them with 
drink from the ever-present spray. And, lastly, luckily when 
man acquired occupation and possession, the Island and forest 
became the property of those by whom its soil was not disturbed, 
but was left as nature herself for hundreds of years had pre- 
served it. Truly we can say with Longfellow : 

"This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, 
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, 
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic." 



ITS HISTORY. 

Indian Ownership, 1600-1764. 

In taking up its history chronologically, let us start with Goat 
Island, in the very early pre-Columbian days, when this section 
was inhabited or certainly visited by those unknown Indians to 
whom we refer as Aborigines. 

We do not know the name of the tribe that inhabited this 
section prior to about 1600, but at that time the Neuter nation 
dwelt on both sides of the Niagara river. In 1651 the Senecas, 




Path on Goat Island. 



Goat Island. 19 

the nearest neighbors of the Neuters on the east, and them- 
selves the westernmost tribe of the Iroquois, suddenly attacked 
the Neuters and annihilated them; and by reason of the con- 
quest claimed their lands. And this claim was recognized as 
valid by the other Indian tribes, and therefore later on by the 
white man. In this way Goat Island passed into the hands of 
the Senecas, who held it for over 100 years. To the Senecas, 
as well as to the Neuters and the Aborigines, Goat Island was 
a sacred spot. To them it was the abode of the Great Spirit of 
Niagara. In the spray they saw the manifestation of their 
Deity, in the thunder of the cataract they heard his voice — 

" And the poor Indian whose untutored mind 
Sees God in clouds and hears him in the wind" 

believed that he could sometimes even see, in the ever shifting 
clouds of mist, the outlined figure of Him whom he worshiped. 
The Island's use to the Aborigines appears to have been as a 
burial ground, and tradition says that in its soil rest the remains 
of many an Indian warrior, interred there hundreds of years ago; 
over whose mounds to-day stand trees of great age. Here, says 
the same untraceable tradition, was interred the body, when re- 
covered, of the " fairest maiden of the tribe," who was annually 
sent over the Falls, in a white canoe decked with flowers, as the 
noblest possible sacrifice to the Great Spirit. 

There is no written nor published record, that I know of, of 
any Indian burial taking place on the Island. Hennepin makes 
no mention of this use of it, as he would in all probability have 
done had the Senecas, or even had their immediate predecessors, 
the Neuters, buried their warriors here. But he says " the island 
is inaccessible." Hence we can only assume that these graves 
long antedate his visit, and are the graves of Aborigines. 



20 Goat Island. 

In 1834, the skeleton of a young female that had been dug 
up on Goat Island shortly before, was in the Museum of the 
Boston Medical College. This may possibly have been the skele- 
ton of that heroine of the " Legend of the White Canoe," who 
was the last " fairest maiden " to be sacrificed to Niagara's 
Deity. It was found interred in a sitting posture; and it is said 
that " the graves on the island were in a sandy spot, each body 
in a separate grave, always in a sitting or squatting posture, 
and without ornaments." Can this position of burying their 
dead be any aid in tracing the tribe or stock to which the 
Aborigines about Niagara belonged? It has been further ad- 
vanced as possible that these Indian burials on the Island took 
place when the Island was a part of the mainland, but this seems 
to me to be improbable. 

Goat Island, practically as it is to-day, has existed for many 
hundred years, and its insular position, so difficult of access, 
added to its sacred character as the home of Deity, must have 
been one of the main reasons for its selection by the Indians 
as their warriors' burying ground. 

Tradition tells us that the Indians of long ago made annual 
pilgrimages to Niagara, often coming great distances, to offer 
to the Great Spirit sacrifices of the spoils of the chase, of war, 
and of the crops. Further, the chiefs and warriors, invoking 
blessings for the future, used to cast into its waters offerings of 
their weapons and adornments. We must assume that at least 
these offerings were made from Goat Island, as no " brave " 
would have been considered worthy of the name who could not 
reach the insular abode of the Great Spirit, from thence to offer 
up his invocation. 

While there are references to Niagara Falls, though not by 
name, in works published from 1604 on — in Champlain, in the 



Goat Island. 21 

Jesuit Relations, in De Creuxius, etc.- — I know of no reference to 
Goat Island until Hennepin, who first saw it in December, 1678, 
mentions it, saying of Niagara: "Its fall is composed of two 
sheets of water and a cascade with an island sloping down," and 
in the English edition of his works, he tells of " This wonderful 
downfall with an isle sloping along the middle of it." 

And in the same work, when he again saw Niagara on his 
return from the West, he says: "After it has run thus violently 
for six leagues it meets with a small sloping island about half 
a quarter of a league long and near 300 feet broad, as well" as 
one can guess by the eye, for it is impossible to come at it in 
a canoe of bark, the waters run with that force. The isle is full 
of cedar and firr, but the land of it lies no higher than that on 
the bank of the river. It seems to be all level even as far as the 
two great cascades that make the main fall. The two sides of 
the channel which are made by the isle, and run on both sides of 
it, overflow almost the very surface of the earth of said isle, 
as well as the land that lies on the banks of the river to the 
east and west, as it runs south and north. But we must ob- 
serve that at the end of the isle on the side of the two great 
falls there is a sloping rock which reaches as far as the Great 
Gulph into which the said waters fall; and yet the rock is not 
at all wetted by the two cascades which fall on both sides, be- 
cause the two torrents which are made by the isle throw them- 
selves with a prodigious force, one towards the east and the 
other towards the west, from off the end of the isle where the 
Great Fall is." 

La Hontan, who saw Niagara in 1687, when he accompanied De 
Nonville in the expedition to build Fort Niagara, wrote of the 
Island: "Towards the middle of the water-fall of Niagara we 



22 Goat Island. 

descry an island that leans toward the precipice as if it were 
ready to fall." 

These remarks of Hennepin and La Hontan show that 200 
years ago the upper portion of the western end of Goat Island 
projected out over the gorge, and, as the softer shale at the base 
of the cliff above the debris slope had then crumbled away, it 
must have given to this end of the island that sloping or about- 
to-fall appearance mentioned. 

All of this overhanging cliff has, since 1790, tumbled into the 
gorge below. 

In speaking of the beasts that try to cross the river just above 
it La Hontan calls it " that unfortunate island." He published 
no view of Niagara. He was a soldier and possible sites for forts 
interested him more than wonderful scenery. 

For seventy years after Hennepin published his, the first 
known picture of Niagara Falls, and therefore of Goat Island, 
numerous pictures of them appeared, mostly in geographies and 
books of travel, published in many languages and in several 
countries of Europe. All of these pictures, while varying in de- 
tails, were based mainly on Hennepin's; all showing Goat Island 
as extending far up stream; but some of them represented it as 
very narrow at the cliff and throughout its length, while others 
broadened it even more than Hennepin did. 

Between 1719, when Joncaire established his cabin or ware- 
house at Lewiston, with French attendants, and 1725, when the 
French built and garrisoned their second Fort Niagara, some 
of these men may have and probably did visit the Island; indeed 
there is no one to whom we can, with more probability of being 
correct,' ascribe the honor of having been the first white man 
to set foot on Goat Island than to Joncaire. He was an adopted 



■■■■ -.■■1«,IX-.J»,. 1 ^ : , 




The Legend op the White Canoe. 



Goat Island. 23 

child of the Senecas, and the man to whom Charlevoix refers 
as speaking " with all the good sense of a Frenchman and with all 
the eloquence of an Iroquois." 

As the garrison at Fort Niagara, from 1725 to 1759 was usually 
a large one, it is more than probable that a number of these 
adventurous French officers and soldiers were at various times 
piloted to the Island in the canoes of the Senecas, who lived in 
this section and who were the firm friends of the French. In 
January, 1751, there appeared in London, in the Gentlemen's 
Magazine, a picture of Niagara Falls and a letter from the 
Swedish Naturalist Peter Kalm, who had visited the Falls the 
year before. 

This picture, without the ladders on the Goat Island cliff, was 
a fair sample of the pictures of Niagara up to that time, and is 
reproduced herewith. In the letter, Kalm tells of two Indians 
who, twelve years before (that is in 1738), had gone in a canoe 
on the river above the falls, but having some brandy with them, 
became intoxicated, and lying down to sleep in the canoe, were 
carried down stream so far that the noise of the falls awakened 
them. By great effort they reached Goat Island, but their canoe 
seems to have been carried over the falls. After some time, 
two or three days probably, being nearly starved, and seeing 
no other possible way of escape they made ladders of the long 
vines that grew on the Island, and fastening the ends at the 
bank above, let them down the cliff and descended by them to 
the water's edge below. Here they tried to swim across the 
river, but the waves repeatedly beat them back, bruised, onto 
the Island's base. Discouraged, they ascended their ladder and 
finally attracted, by their cries, the attention of two Indians on 
the main shore. These, seeing the situation, hastened to report 
it to the commandant at Fort Niagara. 



24 Goat Island, 

" He caused four poles to be shod with sharp irons. As the 
waters that ran by the Island were then shallow, two Indians took 
upon them to walk thereto by the help of these poles, to save 
the other poor creatures, or perish in the attempt. They took 
leave of their friends as if they were going to death. Each had 
two poles in his hands to set to the bottom of the stream to 
keep them steady. So they went and got to the Island, and 
having given poles to the two poor Indians there, they all re- 
turned safely to the main shore. Those two Indians who in this 
above mentioned manner were first brought to this Island are 
still alive. They were nine days on the Island. 

" Now, since the road to this island has been found, the In- 
dians go there often to kill deer, which have tried to cross the 
river above the falls and were driven upon this island by the 
stream." But, Kalm adds, " If the king of France were to give 
me all Canada, I would not venture to go to this island; and 
were you to see it, Sir, I am sure you would have the same senti- 
ment." Kalm also in this letter,, makes the first mention I find 
anywhere of small islands adjacent to Goat Island, saying, 
" On the west side of this island are several small islands or 
rocks of no consequence." 

Another account of evidently this same story, tells how the 
rescuers were provided by the blacksmith at Fort Niagara with 
long stilts shod with iron points, on these they walked to the 
Island, carrying two extra pairs of stilts, and all four Indians 
" stilted " back to safety. While the inventor of this last story 
avoided the incongruity of having men walk on foot across a 
channel where the water now at least is ten or twelve feet deep, 
his stilt story is almost as absurd. 

Later on a traveler heard the story in this way : " By making 
long bark ropes and carrying them a considerable distance up 



Goat Island. 25 

the stream, they succeeded in floating one end against the Island 
by which means they were enabled to rescue the poor wretches 
from certain death." The inventor of this story evidently did 
not know that the current would carry the end of the rope away 
from, not towards, Goat Island. In 1759 the English captured 
Fort Niagara and secured complete control of all this section. 
In 1763 the Senecas planned and executed the Devils Hole mas- 
sacre, from which only one man of the English escort escaped, 
John Stedman by name. Amid a shower of bullets and arrows 
he spurred his horse and dashed in safety to Fort Schlosser, 
nearly five miles away. He subsequently claimed that the 
Senecas, marvelling at his escape, and believing the Great Spirit 
had given him a charmed life, gave him all the land between the 
Niagara river and the line of his flight, some five thousand acres 
in all. The Senecas do not appear to have paid any attention 
to his claim, although during his lifetime Stedman seems to 
have occupied unmolested, such lands in his claimed grant as 
he chose, but only a small part thereof. When his descendants 
set up their claim, under this Seneca grant, they could produce 
no deed nor proof of one. They claimed that Stedman gave the 
deed to Sir William Johnson for safe keeping, and that it was 
destroyed when Sir William's residence, Johnson Hall, was 
burned. 

They kept up the fight until about 1823, when the State of 
New York, after their claim had been declared worthless, ejected 
them from such lands as they occupied under the claim. 

In 1764, at the great treaty held at Fort Niagara, between 
Great Britain and nearly all the Indian tribes of North America, 
Sir William Johnson obtained for England from the Senecas all 
the land along the Niagara river, four miles wide, averaging two 



26 Goat Island. 

miles in width on each side thereof, from Lake Ontario to Lake 
Erie. The diplomatic Senecas specially excepted from this grant 
all the islands in the river. 

Only the year before that nation had attacked the English, 
in the Devils Hole Massacre, and had then been obliged to sue 
to Sir William Johnson for peace and reconciliation. And even 
at this great treaty gathering they had not kept their promise 
to him of being present, and had come to it only after he had 
arrived at the fort and finding them unrepresented, had sent 
a special messenger to them and threatened to send Bradstreet's 
army to punish them if they did not at once appear and fulfil 
their former promises. These they had just fulfilled, and now 
they begged Sir William Johnson personally to accept from them 
all the islands in the Niagara river "as a token of their regard 
for him, and in remembrance of the trouble they had from time 
to time given him." 

Johnson's influence with the Indians was unbounded. He had 
been married to a sister of the great Mohawk warrior Brant, 
he was England's Indian agent, and so far as dealing with In- 
dians of all tribes was concerned, he was the most influential 
white man that ever trod the continent of North America. Such 
a man's friendship was worth having at any time, especially to 
the Senecas at that time, even if paid for by the gift of many 
islands, Goat Island included. 

Sir William Johnson accepted the proffered gift, fearing a 
loss of influence with the Senecas if he refused. But the Eng- 
lish military law of that period forbade officers to accept pres- 
ents, and certainly in cases of gifts of land, which could not be 
kept secret, the law was obeyed. So Sir William at once pre- 
sented all these islands to the English Crown. 



Goat Island. 27 

And thus in 1764, this wondrous, though as yet unnamed 
Island, passed from the possession of the Senecas and into the 
possession of the Crown of England. 



SOVEREIGN OWNERSHIP. 

1764-1816. 

In 1764 there came to Fort Niagara, in Bradstreet's army, in 
the British service, a man destined in after years to be a con- 
spicuous figure in Colonial history, Israel Putnam. He was lieu- 
tenant-colonel of a Connecticut regiment, and tradition says that 
during the month that Bradstreet's army lay encamped at that 
fort he visited Goat Island on a wager; being the first white man 
to set foot thereon. A long rope was fastened to a boat, its other 
end being secured on the shore, and it was paid out as the boat 
was swiftly paddled, by its Indian guides, to the Island. The 
boat and its occupants were later hauled back to the mainland. 
The story in itself is by no means improbable, for it is easily pos- 
sibly to-day to go to Goat Island by boat, starting well up stream 
and keeping over the bar that extends far easterly from the 
Island, and it has been very frequently done during the past 100 
years. Stedman, referred to later on, is reported to have gone 
to the Island on horseback, and by swimming his horse out to the 
sandy bar well up stream and letting the animal walk to the 
Island on the bar, on which the water is always shallow, it might 
easily be accomplished. It is much more than probable, how- 
ever, that white men had been on the Island before 1764. 

In 1768, an English officer, Lieut. Wm. Pierie, then stationed 
at that same fort, made, from the Canadian side, a sketch of Niag- 



28 Goat Island. 

ara Falls, which was engraved and issued the next year. While 
containing inaccuracies, this view of the Falls stood forth to the 
world as the first picture of them ever published that had the 
merit of approximate truthfulness of delineation, and at the same 
time any artistic pretensions. 

Prior to 1770 John Stedman, before referred to, as claiming 
under a deed from the Senecas all the land on the American side 
near Niagara Falls, had construed this claim so as to include 
Goat Island, and had cleared a portion of the upper end thereof 
and raised thereupon a fine crop of turnips. In the fall of that 
year he placed on the Island a number of animals, among them a 
male goat. His expressed object in putting these animals there 
was to get them out of the reach of the bears and wolves which 
then prowled, practically unmolested, about his home on the main 
shore, some two miles further up stream. That winter was a 
very severe one. Why he left the animals uncared for is un- 
known, but by spring all but the goat were dead. 

His tenacity of life gave hie name to his Island prison, and 
Goat Island it has been called ever since. Whether the goat died 
on the Island is not known. So thoroughly has this name become 
attached to the Island that it would seem impossible now to 
change it, were it so desired, which it is to be hoped it will not 
be. In 1819, when the Commissioners under the treaty of Ghent 
were engaged in determining the boundary line between the 
United States and Canada, Gen. Porter, one of the Commissioners, 
and also an owner of Goat Island, proposed to call it " Iris 
Island," and it was so designated in the minutes of, and on the 
maps published by, the Commissioners. 

But the traveling public of the world would have none of it; 
Goat Island it was; Goat Island it should remain. So they called 



Goat Island. 29 

it; so they continued to call it; and so it is known even until to- 
day, in literature and in cartography; and that is why the title 
of this pamphlet reads, not " Iris Island," but " Goat Island." 

At the close of the Revolution, in 1783, by the treaty of Paris 
England relinquished all claim over her American colonies, and 
their lands. Thus Goat Island passed into the possession of the 
State of New York. That treaty provided that the line of division 
between Canada and the United States should run " along the 
middle of the communication [between Lake Erie and Lake On- 
tario] into Lake Erie." 

Under this # wording the State of New York most naturally 
claimed Goat Island, and subsequently the Commissioners, under 
the treaty of Ghent, fixed the following boundary line at this 
point, which is still in force: " Thence [from a point in Lake On- 
tario opposite the mouth of the Niagara river] to and up the 
middle of the said river to the Great Falls; thence up the Falls 
through the point of the Horseshoe, keeping to the west of Iris 
or Goat Island, and of the group of small islands at its head," 
thus fully sustaining New York's contention. It was not until a 
year and a. half after the signing of the treaty of Ghent, which 
was signed March 24, 1814, that the State of New York parted 
with the title to Goat Island; and not until 1822 that the Com- 
missioners under said treaty signed their decision and thus fixed 
our northern boundary line. 

It is also certain, with the large English garrison at Fort 
Niagara from 1759 until after the Revolution, and even until 
1796 (until which date England held Fort Niagara) that many 
adventurous Englishmen visited Goat Island, and of this we have 
more substantial proof than we have of the earlier visits of 
Frenchmen. 



30 Goat Island. 

Isaac Weld, who visited the Falls in 1796, says, " The Commo- 
dore of the King's vessels on Lake Erie, who had been employed 
on that lake for upwards of thirty years, informed me that when 
he first came into the country [that would be in 1776], it was 
a common practice for young men to go to the island in the 
middle of the Falls; that after dining there they used frequently 
to dare each other to walk into the river towards certain large 
rocks in the midst of the rapids not far from the edge of the 
Falls; and sometimes to proceed through the water even beyond 
these rocks. No such rocks are to be seen at present; and were 
a man to advance two yards into the river from the island, he 
would be inevitably swept away by the torrent.'' 

Chataubriand, who saw the Falls in 1790, says, " Between the 
two Falls there is an island, hollow underneath, and which hangs 
with all its trees over the chaos of the waves," thus proving 
Hennepin's statement of the island " sloping down." 

P. Campbell, in 1793, relates a curious story about the Island 
having been so " overrun with rattlesnakes that it was dangerous 
for a person to walk on it until a parcel of swine were put on it 
and which nearly rooted them out." 

The title to Goat Island was not involved in the dispute, at 
the commencement of this century, between Massachusetts and 
New York regarding the ownership of the western part of the 
latter state. 

Judge Augustus Porter first visited Goat Island in 1805, going 
by canoe. He found at its upper end the clearing of a few acres 
made many years before by Stedman. 

He also found carved on the trees thereon the dates 1769, 
1770, 1779, 1783; which is pretty substantial proof of visits to 
the Island having been made by Englishmen as before claimed. 




Cave op the Winds and Rock of Ages. 



Goat Island. 31 

Of course, since the Island was bridged, thousands and thou- 
sands have visited it; so that an early date now readable on any 
tree thereon, may have been carved by a visitor of much more 
recent years. 

In 1811 Augustus Porter, in behalf of his brother and himself, 
applied to the State of New York for the purchase of the Island. 
His petition read as follows: 

" To the Honorable the Legislature of the State of New York, 
in Senate and Assembly convening; the petition of the subscriber 
humbly showeth, that your petitioner is an inhabitant of the 
town of Cambria, in the County of Niagara. That his place of 
residence is surrounded by a large body of unsettled lands, which 
are likely to remain so for a long time, which afford a shelter 
for wolves and other wild animals, owing to which the raising of 
sheep is rendered extremely difficult. That, in the Niagara river, 
directly opposite to the residence of your petitioner there is a 
small island owned by the people of the State, called Goat Island, 
containing as your petitioner believes, about 100 acres, where 
sheep might be with great safety kept. Your petitioner there- 
fore prays that your honorable body will pass a law authorizing 
the commissioners of the land office to sell to your petitioner 
this said island at a fair price, to be determined by appraisal, or 
in such other way as your honorable body in your wisdom may 
deem proper, and your petitioner will ever pray. 

"AUGUSTUS PORTER." 
" February 23, 1811." 

The petition was referred to the Surveyor General, who re- 
ported as follows: "The surveyor general, on the petition re- 
spectfully reports, that the petitioner is settled on the shore of 
the Niaraga river opposite to an island of about 100 acres called 
Goat Island, which he is desirous of obtaining for the purpose 



32 Goat Island. 

of keeping sheep free from wolves and other wild animals, which? 

on account of the country it is difficult to do. This island is 

about 7 chains from the east shore, with its lower end butted 

on the precipice over which the Niagara river falls at the great 

Cataract. On account of the great velocity of the current which: 

descends to the island and sweeps its sides, the passage to and 

from it is difficult and considered so dangerous that few have 

attempted it. The petitioner, however, thinks that by means 

of projections from the shore he can lessen the difficulty and 

danger of the passage, and is willing for that privilege he prays 

for, to pay the State a reasonable addition to what is appraised 

as its fair value. From the circumstances stated it must be 

evident that the value of the island must very materially depend 

on its being an appendage to the estate on the shore directly 

opposite it. Should the Legislature judge proper to authorize a 

grant of it to the petitioner, it ought to be with the proviso that 

the Indian title to it be first extinguished. 

" Respectfully, 

" SIMEON DE WITT." 
"■ February 22, 1811." 

It would appear from the dates that the Surveyor General had 
made out a not unfavorable report on the petition, the day before 
the latter was signed. 

The Legislature declined to authorize the sale however, stat- 
ing as its reason that it expected to use the Island itself, erecting 
thereon in the near future either a State prison or a State 
arsenal. 

Judge Porter still kept on raising sheep, and still wanted 
Goat Island, and he finally outwitted the State, and obtained it. 
In 1814 he found out that Samuel Sherwood, a prominent lawyer, 
owned an instrument called a " float," given to him by the State 
of New York, in consideration of a failure of title to some lands 



Goat Island. 33 

he had purchased of it. This " float " authorized the bearer to 
locate 200 acres on any of the unsold or unappropriated lands 
of the Coinnionwealth. For himself and his brother, Augustus 
Porter bought this instrument from Sherwood, and with it duly 
assigned and attested, he started east. As soon as the stagecoach 
could land him in Albany, he hastened to the office of the Land 
Commissioners, and stepping up to the desk laid down the "float," 
remarking, perhaps in a tone of exultation, " There, damn it, I 
want Goat Island;" stating at the same time that he located a 
sufficient acreage of the float to cover that and the adjacent 
islands. 

He got them, but necessary formalities took nearly two years. 
In October, 1815, the necessary survey was completed, and it was 
only a few weeks before that the State extinguished the Indian 
title to the islands, and could give a good title to them. This 
cession from the Senecas was dated at Buffalo September 12th,, 
1S15, and under it these Indians reserved the right of "hunting, 
fishing, and fowling in and upon the waters of the Niagara river 
and of encamping on the said islands for that purpose," which 
rights, in law, did they care to exercise them, the Senecas still 
possess. The compensation paid by the State of New York to 
the Senecas for the cession of all the islands in the Niagara 
river within the jurisdiction of the United States (which included 
Goat Island) was f 1,000 in cash and $1,500 a year in perpetuity. 

It was not until November 16th, 1816, that Daniel D. Tompkins, 
Governor of the State of New York, signed the " patent " or deed, 
transferring these islands to Augustus Porter, of which inter- 
esting document (now in the possession of the author) a copy 
is given in this pamphlet. Augustus Porter at once deeded a half 
interest in the Goat Island group to his brother, Gen. Peter B. 
Porter. 



PRIVATE OWNERSHIP. 

1816-1885. 

The Porter brothers immediately made arrangements to get a 
bridge to Goat Island, and in the spring of 1817 a wooden 
structure (of which a reproduction is given) was erected, at a 
point some 50 rods up stream from the present bridge. When it 
was completed every visitor to Niagara was glad to pay toll in 
order to get on to the Island, and by the end of the year 1817 it 
was evident that Goat Island was worth more as a pleasure 
resort than it ever could be worth as a sheep pasture. 

So the proverbial idea of separating the sheep from the goats 
(in this case putting the sheep on the Island and leaving the 
goats on the mainland) was abandoned. The small island above 
this first bridge, shown in the engraving, if it ever existed, has 
long since been washed away. 

So bold was this enterprise of bridging the rapids considered, 
that years afterwards Margaret Fuller Ossoli suggested that the 
Great Spirit of Niagara "had punished General Porter's temerity 
with deafness, which must have come upon him when he sunk the 
first stone into the rapids," 

The heavy masses of ice coming down the river in the early 
months of 1818 struck against the unprotected piers of the bridge 
with such force as to carry them away. Promptly with the com- 
ing of spring, 1818, the Porter brothers erected a second but a 
more substantial wooden bridge. They selected a site further 
down stream and built it from the mainland to Bath,' or as it is 
now called Green Island, and from that island they built another 
bridge to Goat Island. These were built on the sites of the 
present bridges, their builders correctly assuming that by reason 







Second Bridge to Goat Island. 1818. 





Third Bridge to Goat Island. 1855. 



Goat Island. 35 

■of the descent of the river over the rocks, in the space between 
the destroyed and the new structure, the huge cakes of ice would 
be so broken up that comparatively little damage would be done 
to the new piers. 

These two bridges (a cut of the one leading from Green Island 
to the main shore is given) with ordinary repairs stood till 1855, 
when they were replaced by the iron structures that to-day af- 
ford access to the Island. 

In reply to the oft asked question how were these bridges 
built, let me answer; two giant trees about 80 feet long were 
felled in the vicinity, and hewed square on two opposite sides. 
A level platform, protected on the river side by cribbing, was 
built on the main shore. The two logs, parallel and some 8 feet 
apart, were laid on rollers, and with their shore ends heavily 
weighted with stone, were pushed out over the rapids. On each 
log a man walked out to the end, carrying with him a sharp iron 
pointed staff. A crevice in the rocky bed of the river having 
been found under the end of each of these logs, the staff was 
driven down into it, and to it the end of the log was firmly 
lashed. Plank were then nailed on these logs, and on this bridge 
stones were dragged out and laid in a pier, around these staves 
and under the end of either log, until a rocky foundation sup- 
ported both timbers. Each succeeding span was then built in a 
like manner. While the bridge was in process of construction, 
Red Jacket, the famous Seneca, was on the bank an interested 
spectator. As the first span was successfully completed, and 
the erection of the bridge thus assured, some one asked him what 
he thought of it. Rising majestically, and drawing his blanket 
close about him, he muttered: "Damn Yankee," and stalked away. 

Thus Goat Island was accessible to the public; and in 1818, 



30 Goat Island. 

on the completion of the bridge, was made the first road around 
it. On the western and southern sides of the island it was built 
out beyond the upper edge of the land of to-day; for since that 
date some four rods in width on the western side and nearly 10 
rods in widlli on the western linlf of I he southern side of the 
Island have been washed away. 

Here on the "Island of Iris, at the Falls of Niagara, Friday, the 
4th day of June, 1819" (so read the minutes), when their survey 
had reached the mouth of the Niagara river, met Gen. Peter B. 
Porter, commissioner on the part of the United States of 
America, and John Ogilby, commissioner on the part of his 
Britannic Majesty under the treaty of Ghent, with their secre- 
tary and attendants, in regular session. Among other things 
accomplished at this session, they resolved "that on the arrival 
of the surveyors, who were daily expected from Lake Ontario, 
where they had been engaged in completing some unfinished 
business of Insl year, they proceed to the survey of the Niagara 
river and its islands and on the completion I lienor continue the 
survey of the [boundary] line between the United States and 
Canada." 

Among the illustrious visitors to the island in 1825 came the 
Marquis of Lafayette, then the guest of the United States; who 
after a delightful walk of two hours left the Island, which ap- 
peared to him "like an aerial garden sustained by clouds and 
surrounded by thunder," regretting "that its distance from 
France would not permit him to purchase it as it would make a 
delightful residence." 

Lafayette's secretary, M. La Vasseur, added to his account of 
the visit "The surrounding currents of water offer an incalculable 
moving power for machinery, which might be easily applied to 
all sorts of manufactories." 



Goat Island. 37 

The owners of trie Island were then power users and power 
developers, but were opposed to any such uses of this Island. 
They did develop power and erect mills on the main shore; and 
the one mill (a paper mill) whose erection was later permitted on 
one of the smaller islands, was allowed solely to enable one of 
the sons of Augustus Porter to start in business. 

About 1826 a few deer (which had been plentiful in the vicin- 
ity) were placed on the Island, but the visitors of that day took 
such a delight in chasing them that, in their fright the animals, 
one by one, fled into the river and were carried over the falls. 
The great attraction on the Canadian side at this time was Table 
Rock, a projecting ledge just at the edge of the. Horseshoe Fall, 
and. as an offset to that, in 1827 a bridge was built from Goat 
Island out to what is now known as Terrapin Rock. It was 
about 300 feet long, and the end of the bridge projected about 10 
feet beyond the edge of the falls, forming an absolutely unique 
and dangerous point of observation. The heavy timbers of the 
bridge projected out some feet beyond the end of the bridge 
itself. 

The next attraction built on the Island was the Biddle Stairs, 
enabling people to reach the slope below the island. They were 
erected in 1829, at the suggestion of Nicholas Biddle, of United 
States Bank fame, and he contributed a part of the expense of 
their erection. These stairs, after a period of 60 years of unin- 
terrupted use, still afford the only means of descent to the debris 
slope below and to the Cave of the Winds. 

Soon after their erection in the same year, there appeared at 
Niagara that man whose name is yet a synonym of high jumping, 
Sam Patch. The cliff of Goat Island appealed to him and his en- 
treaties gained him permission to erect on the slope below the 



38 Goat Island. 

Island and north of the Biddle Stairs, a platform from which he 
made, successfully, two leaps, 95 feet high, into the deep waters 
below. The platform from which he jumped was supported by 
(and also reached by) two enormous ladders whose lower ends 
rested upon the huge rocks at the waters edge, the ladders them- 
selves leaning far out over the waters. Their upper ends were 
fastened by ropes to the top of the rocky slope on which the 
lower end of the Biddle Stairs rest. Midway of their length 
they were also fastened to the bank by ropes. Guy ropes, ex- 
tending respectively up and down stream, kept the ladders from 
swaying sideways. 

In the same year there came to Niagara Capt. Basil Hall, of the 
Royal British Navy; an extensive traveller and a voluminous 
writer. He admired and criticized Niagara; wrote learnedly and 
entertainingly about the pressure of the atmosphere behind the 
sheet of water, and left in his works his approbation of the de- 
cision of the owners of the Island to retain it in its natural state; 
and also took credit that his expressed views in favor of this 
course "may have contributed in some degree to the salvation of 
the most interesting spot in all America." 

The same summer there appeared at Niagara that remarkable 
stranger, Francis Abbott, whose name will always be associated 
with this locality as "The Hermit of the Falls." Young, 
learned, cultivated, and versed in the arts, he sought solitude 
and communion with nature. English relatives supplied him 
with ample money for his simple needs. Intending on his arrival 
to spend a week here, he passed the remaining year and a half of 
his life close to the great Cataract. He wanted to build a cabin 
on the first Sister Island which he proposed to reach by means of 
a drawbridge, but to this the owners of the Island could not 




CAVE OF THE WINDS. 




BIDDLE 



STAIRS FROM BELOW. 



BIDDLE 



STAIRS FROM ABOVE. 



Goat Island. 39 

consent. Obtaining permission to occupy an unused hut that 
stood on the northeasterly side of Goat Island, he lived there for 
a year in solitude, save for his dog and his cat; preparing his 
own meals, writing much, but promptly destroying everything 
that he wrote, playing often on his flute and guitar; at all hours, 
but chiefly at night, when he would meet no human being, walk- 
ing about the Island. He bathed daily, the year around, in the 
river, usually in the pool below the little fall between Goat Island 
and the first Sister Island, which thus has received the name of the 
" Hermit's Cascade." On the timbers that projected out beyond 
the edge of the bridge at Terrapin Rock, and which extended out 
even over the gulf, he would venture, walking rapidly right out 
to the end, and then turning quickly and fearlessly, retrace his 
steps. From the ends of these timbers he would hang by his 
hands, his body suspended in mid-air over the abyss, exhibiting 
absolute fearlessness and strength of will. 

The increasing number of visitors induced him to leave the 
Island, and to occupy a hut on the mainland. Here he lived for 
six months, and one morning was drowned while bathing near the 
foot of the American Fall. He is buried in the cemetery at Niag- 
ara Falls; and his life remains as a wonderful example of the all- 
pervading influence that Nature at Niagara can exert on an over- 
sensitive soul. 

In the winter of this same year, a remarkable one in the Island's 
history, it is stated that the cold was so intense, and the ice in 
the river and in the rapids above so thick, that persons were able 
to cross to Goat Island without using the bridges; a remarkable 
fact, if true, and a condition which Nature has never vouchsafed 
us since; although during the intervening seventy years there 
have been some remarkably cold periods, notably in recent years, 



40 Goat Island. 

in 1874 and 1896. In the latter year, save for one wide break, 
over the deepest channel, a solid mass of ice accumulated, below 
the bridge to Green Island, and between the main shore and the 
smaller islands and Goat Island, on which many persons walked 
daily for nearly a week. And one man drove one afternoon from 
Bath Island down almost to the edge of the American Fall. 

In 1833 was built of the stones of this immediate vicinity the 
Terrapin Tower, close to the edge or brink of the Horseshoe Fall 
and quite a distance out from the Island. This tower was the one 
objective point of all visitors, the Mecca of all pilgrims. Of 
rude architectural design and construction, it stood for over 
forty years, a unique and not inharmonious adjunct to the great 
Cataract. 

As the old Terrapin bridge was replaced with the present struc- 
ture a few years afterwards, and as elderly visitors of to-day 
regret the disappearance of the old tower, a landmark of a past 
generation, I reproduce an old engraving of them as they were 
in 1834. 

Familiar as the trip to-day is to many visitors, the first entrance 
of the Cave of the Winds, or ^Bolus's Cave, as it was first called, 
on July 15, 1834, marked an epoch at Niagara. For several years 
before that date visitors had penetrated a few feet behind the 
sheet of water below Table Rock on the Canadian side, but the 
passage behind the small sheet of water that flowed between 
Goat and Luna islands, and out beyond amidst the waters dash- 
ing and plunging in the sunlight, and the journey from rock to 
rock, and over rushing torrents, in front of this fall and back to 
Goat Island, was a new trip, with new sensations and new views. 
The trip is an experience which has been extolled by all who have 
ever enjoyed it, and it is a trip whose attractiveness has not 








• ' .. ' 




Goat Island. 41 

t>een dimmed, but lias increased, as the years have gone by; for the 
rushing, eddying spray and the sheets of water driven with great 
force against the face of the cliff have year by year eaten into the 
rocky back of the cave, making it larger and more wonderful 
with each succeeding summer. 

On March 29, 1848, " for that day only," persons walked in 
the bed of the rocky channel of the American rapids between Goat 
Island and the mainland and from Goat Island out in the bed of 
the main channel towards Canada. But the river was not ice 
bound; its flow was diminished, not entirely cut off, its supply 
at Lake Erie having been temporarily blocked. Lake Erie was 
then full of floating ice, crowding to its outlet, the source of the 
Niagara river. During the previous afternoon a strong north- 
east wind had driven the ice back into the lake. During the 
night the wind veered suddenly and blew a gale from the west. 
This forced the ice floe sharply, in a mass, into the narrow chan- 
nel or source of the river, quickly blocked it up, and the still ad- 
vancing ice sealed up this source with a temporary barrier, pushed 
some feet into the air. It did not take long for the water north 
of this barrier to drain off, and in the morning, the Niagara river, 
as men knew it, " was not." The American Falls were dry. The 
Canadian Falls were a mere shadow of their former selves, a few 
threads or streams of water only falling over the edge. People, 
fearful every moment of an onrush of water from up stream, 
walked in the channels, where, up to that time, " the foot of man 
had never trod," and where it has never trod since. 

The roar of Niagara was reduced to a moan; the spray, and 
therefore, the rainbows disappeared. All day this phenomenon 
lasted, but by night the sun's rays and the pressure of Lake 
Erie's waters had made inroads on the icy dam, and during the 
night the barrier was swept away. By the next morning the 



42 Goat Island. 

river again rushed by in its might, and its roar once more pro- 
claimed that Niagara had resumed its sway. 

In 1860 two visitors of special note came to Niagara; Blondin, 
the man of iron nerve, and Albert Edward, heir apparent to the 
British Throne. The former wanted to stretch a rope from Goat 
Island's southwestern end to the Canadian shore opposite, and 
balance pole in hand to cross the gorge, where the column of 
spray might envelop him in its folds and shut him out of the 
view of the thousands who would throng the banks to see him 
risk his life. But Goat Island's owners refused to be parties to 
such an exhibition, and Blondin stretched his rope across the 
gorge about half a mile below, and there, in the presence of the 
Prince of Wales on one occasion, and in the presence of multi- 
tudes of people on others, several times crossed the gorge from 
side to side in safety. 

New scenes of great beauty were opened up to visitors by the 
erection of the bridges to the Three Sister Islands in 1869; but 
the one point of vantage, the grand old Terrapin Tower, was 
needlessly torn down in 1873 in order that it might not prove an 
adverse attraction to the interests of a company which had 
bought and were about to fence in the last spot of land on the 
American shore from which a near view of the Falls could be 
obtained ; a point which so long as it remained in the possession 
of the owners of Goat Island had been left free to the world. 
In 1877 the idea of the great hydraulic tunnel had been matured 
by Thomas Evershed. His plan and proposition was to have the 
outlet of this tunnel at the base of the slope directly under Goat 
Island, extending the tunnel eastwards under the Island and then 
under the bed of the river; placing the mills on the main shore 
and connecting their wheelpits with the main tunnel by lateral 
tunnels. 



Goat Island. 43 

The passage in 1879, by the Legislature of the State of New 
York, of the preliminary act for the establishment of the State 
Reservation at Niagara precluded the adoption of that route, 
and necessitated the change thereof to its present location, a 
change that resulted financially to the benefit of the gigantic en- 
terprise. 

The next year Leonard Henkle advanced the idea of generating 
an electric current at Niagara that should supply New York city 
and intermediate points with light and power. A balance wheel, 
100 feet in diameter, was to be fastened on, and parallel to, the 
face of the Goat Island cliff; and the induction coils, composed 
of miles and miles of wire, were to be strung across the gorge be- 
tween Goat Island and the Canadian shore. No progress was 
made in carrying this scheme into operation and the establish- 
ment of the New York Reservation has rendered its consumma- 
tion, if ever feasible, impossible. 

In 1885 an international sentiment in favor of State owner- 
ship of the land immediately surrounding the Falls and rapids, 
and their restoration to a state of nature, and preservation for 
all time, free to mankind, took tangible form in the purchase by 
the State of New York, under its power of eminent domain, of 
118 acres of land, including Guat Island, and a tract of land along 
the river on the American shore, Goat Island being the main 
feature of the reservation. 

This land was bought under appraisal, $525,000 being paid for 
the Goat Island group; and on July 15, 1885, all the property so- 
purchased became free forever to the world. 

So after a family ownership of nearly 70 years the direct heirs 
of the original purchasers of this property from the State, ceded 
it back to it. Save for the one desecration of Bath Island, al- 



44 Goat Island. 

lowed, as stated before, purely for family reasons, the property 
was returned to the State in its original and natural condition. 
On all the other islands the owners had preserved the original 
forest beauty. 

Since 1885 the plan has been to consistently restore, on the 
Reservation, the natural scenery. On Green Island all traces of 
the old mill have been removed. 

And thus the islands remain, as nature intended them to be, 
and as they are destined to exist for all time, for "a thing of 
beauty is a joy forever." 



ITS SCENERY. 

" To him who in the love of Nature holds 
. Communion with her visible forms, she speaks 
A various language." 

The scenery of Goat Island is of a two-fold nature; that on 
the island and that from the Island. The scenery from the Island 
is the scenery of Niagara Falls, and I know of no reasonable 
way of describing that scenery, other than to quote the expressed 
thoughts of the master minds who have recorded their impres- 
sions of the great cataract. But to thus quote sufficiently, to 
even partially treat of the subject, would be to fill an entire 
volume. And so confining myself strictly to my subject, I feel 
constrained thus to leave out any material description of the 
scenery, from the island. 

" The walk about Goat Island at Niagara Falls is probably 
unsurpassed in the world for wonder and beauty," wrote Charles 
Dudley Warner, and the judgment of the world agrees with him. 
And possibly, especially to that large number of persons who 
prefer the scenery of the rapids to that of the falls themselves, 



L 



/ 




;vr ";; 



■ , , 




a- • ' 



Goat Island. 45 

there is no more wondrous view about Niagara than that from 
the Terrapin Rocks, where the visitor, looking up the Canadian 
channel, sees before him naught but the upper line of the rapids 
meeting the sky. 

It is of this view that the Duke of Argyle wrote, " The river 
Niagara above the falls, runs in a channel very broad, and very 
little depressed below the level of the country. But there is a 
deep declivity in the bed of the stream for a considerable dis- 
tance above the precipice, and this constitutes what are called 
the rapids. The consequence is that when we stand at any point 
near the edge of the falls, and look up the course of the stream, 
the foaming waters of the rapids constitute the sky line. No 
indication of land is visible; nothing to express the fact that 
we are looking at a river. The crests of the breakers, the leap- 
ing and the rushing of the waters are still seen against the 
clouds, as they are seen on the ocean when the ship from which 
we look is in the trough of the sea. It is impossible to resist 
the effect on the imagination. It is as if the fountains of the 
great deep were being broken up, and that a new deluge were 
coming on the world. The impression is rather increased than 
diminished by the perspective of the low wooded banks on either 
shore, running down to a vanishing point, and seeming to be 
lost in the advancing waters. An apparently shoreless sea, 
tumbling towards one is a very grand and a very awful sight. 
Forgetting, then, what one knows, and giving oneself to what 
one only sees, I do not know that there is anything in nature 
more majestic than the view of the rapids above the Falls of 
Niagara." . 

To many others the view of the rapids, as one stands on and 
looks up stream from the bridge leading to Green Island, is the 



46 Goat Island. 

most beautiful at Niagara. Let me quote Margaret Fuller's de- 
scription of these views: "At last, slowly and thoughtfully I 
walked down to the bridge leading to Goat Island, and when I 
stood upon this frail support, and saw a quarter of a mile of 
tumbling, rushing rapids, and heard their everlasting roar, my 
emotions overpowered me, a choking sensation rose to my 
throat, a thrill rushed through my veins, ' my blood ran rippling 
to my fingers' ends.' This was the climax of the effect which 
the falls produced upon me — neither the American nor the 
British fall moved me as did these rapids. For the magnificence, 
the sublimity of the latter I was prepared by descriptions and 
by paintings. When I arrived in sight of them I merely felt, 
* Ah, yes, here is the fall, just as I have seen it in picture.' 
When I arrived at the Terrapin bridge, I expected to be over- 
whelmed, to retire trembling from this giddy eminence, and gaze 
with unlimited wonder and awe upon the immense mass rolling 
on and on, but, somehow or other, I thought only of comparing 
the effect on my mind with what I had read and heard. I 
looked for a short time, and then with almost a feeling of disap- 
pointment, turned to go to the other points of view to see if I 
was not mistaken in not feeling any surpassing emotion at this 
sight. But from the foot of Biddle's stairs, and the middle of 
the river, and from below the Table rock, it was still ' barren, 
barren all.' And, provoked with my stupidity in feeling most 
moved in the wrong place, I turned away to the hotel, determined 
to set off for Buffalo that afternoon. But the stage did not go, 
and, after nightfall, as there was a splendid moon, I went down 
to the bridge and leaned over the parapet, Where the boiling 
rapids came down in their might. It was grand, and it was also 
gorgeous, the yellow rays of the moon made the broken waves 



Goat Island. 47 

appear like auburn tresses twining around the black rocks. But 
they did not inspire me as before. I felt a foreboding of a 
mightier emotion rise up and swallow all others, and I passed 
on to the Terrapin bridge. Everything was changed, the misty 
apparition had taken off its many-colored crown which it had 
worn all day, and a bow of silvery white spanned its summit. 
The moonlight gave a poetical indefiniteness to the distant parts 
of the waters, and while the rapids were glancing in her beams, 
the river below the falls was black as night, save where the re- 
flection of the sky gave it the appearance of a shield of blued 
steel. No gaping tourists loitered, eyeing with their glasses, or 
sketching on cards the hoary locks of the ancient river god. All 
tended to harmonize with the natural grandeur of the scene. I 
gazed long. I saw how here mutability and unchangeableness 
were united. I surveyed the conspiring waters rushing against 
the rocky ledge to overthrow it at one mad plunge, till, like top- 
pling ambition, o'erleaping themselves, they fall on t'other side, 
expanding into foam ere they reach the deep channel where they 
creep submissively away. Then rose in my breast a genuine ad- 
miration, and a humble adoration of the being who was the ar- 
chitect of this and of all, Happy were the first discoverers of 
Niagara, those who could come unawares upon this view and 
upon that, whose feelings were entirely their own." 

The scenery on the Island is its forest scenery, and by reason 
of its numerous flora and their abundance is wonderfully attract- 
ive at all seasons; in the spring, when the natural forest blooms 
in its vernal foliage, and when the profusion of wild flowers 
carpet the ground; in the summer, when amidst the shaded 
walks and retreats on the little islands, fanned by the ever- 
stirring breezes created by the rapids, one wanders entranced; 



48 Goat Island. 

in the fall, when the gorgeous coloring of the leaves, changed 
by the frost into all the colors of the rainbow, delight and dazzle 
the eye; in winter, when the glorious ice scenery covers every 
tree and twig, and Nature 

" Wasteful decks the branches bare, 
With icy diamonds rich and rare." 

"Not one in 500, we are persuaded, knows anything about the 
apocalypse which is vouchsafed to him who in these glorious 
winter nights seeks the isle, not of Patmos,but of the Goat," wrote 
David Gray, and were one to have his choice of seeing Niagara 
but once, it would be hard to decide whether it should be in 
winter or summer, but probably in winter. 

The scenery of Goat Island by moonlight, at any season, once 
seen is never to be forgotten. One might paraphrase and say 

" If you would see this Isle aright, 
Go visit it by pale moonlight." 

It were useless to attempt a description of it. From the 
Terrapin Rocks and from Luna Island, the Lunar Bow is to be 
seen best in its glorious indistinctness, and it is to these points 

" That many a Lunar belle goes forth, 
To meet a Lunar beau." 

And from the Terrapin Rocks and Luna Island each morning, 
when the sun is not obscured, one gazes entranced into the rising 
clouds of spray, from which the bow of promise, like 

" An arch of glory springs, 
Sparkling as the chain of rings, 
Round the neck of virgins hung." 

And when, on a bright afternoon, one stands among the rocks at 
the base of and in front of the Luna Island Fall, he is the centre 
of a complete rainbow circle. 



,A 



/I 



i-X 



1 THE PEOPLE of the State of New York, r,,>, r ^pa^^j^uJ.% «#* u* «u & .,. „ 

^,.-/. 7 . Know Ye. .Wat - , 



',1,1./ ■///a.,k ,,,«/ I, fit. a, ,',, I. /..A 



IfiHiuiuf /A 



/ ,; 



Said fa.&'j MieMtl mM Jtt«L,i/< 

JfiHUibtt '//r/n MeJauu (■/'.//,,„/! 



I, i.: hi', i in //u <', (ufat//eM/<flat« n -n 1 1 ■ir/t'/ji /'',■//',' . 
</<Jtr/l '.:,.,■ 'et,;>tt.i(rJ nv/A >■ trffyui/vu&l foe/iff) 'il.n-in: /<,.;,<„<; //,. 
:/cr n„7,y..!,-/ lev/'*) -In f, <„<,/<;,? „,,</ A ■«,„/<,„//„ /,'„■ J„„/ // tn>,-;/ V,^k/,,,/ fit,/ 
i i-tn/ii,,,,,,,: ■■■ -'< h-Lt, ,'■;;■,//,„■ /<■,.■■■)-,.■« .,„,/.;„,,•■"/:/ //, ■/„',:„- ,„aa'f/l 



/iii.w/ /('///fast; c-// //cr /f/K/vi' <■/ rr/, •, > /S'fy rlud nae • in {/it lit /At /< • 7, /////,./ ,-//.■<: ./fn</ *'{./■/,/ Arc act ■■ -/_ 



. 



Together old affand •» T U itc y£b, UMmmH i^^^MMd, I, defrme Uyiip « « ,- 7 .,,/ ojgataim y. 

v,r,M>h,» , To have and to hold d- „' ■■■ J ,■„>,,■.,„.! r „„,„/ /,,<„«„,, ,<«„. tXcfctJeMptfuj firU^ Au — 

,fi .,, ,,, . ....J \J!i«M*,i& \fiaU ,/ ,J,u;< a nc,j,r or, , Hpi'Il fimditiol., IK S BrthelfSS, Wat «« jk 

_ ''__ . .:_-_ ' - " i 'H-h" !} <- • ' ■ 

ffltt$*eft«um8 wfcwof; m) I,,-, «^/<s^«, Vain, «>& mU &*,,/, *,Jd p, « " » 

tovfiu n/»/tf»i/ cX^r.aO -J tJnuA-kiMj ^ « - - ( ':y" ;"<,•»■ >«.r oj our f,mi 

&,„, «n« ,.,;>„„,..,',.(</;.: Jfar,/ /ti/kmJ, aim, ?g«y tfMfny. *£ Jcc^.Jf. _ _«% / 



fi 



rhnjnf I tntmfa t A 81 6 



Passe<hhc Sccrdanj's-Ojjice the ffi . 



hMmul&U. 



, /fa 



»J u/ our J£o:d ate 
) 



// /" 



PATENT TO GOAT ISLAND FBOM STATE OF NEW YORK. 



Goat Island. 49 

Byron's description of Velino may properly be applied to 
Niagara: 

" A matchless Cataract 
Horribly beautiful! but on the verge, 
From side to side, ben'eath the glittering morn 
An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge 
Like hope upon a deathbed, and unworn 
Its steady dyes, while all around is torn 
By the distracted waters, bears serene 
Its brilliant hues, with all their beams unshorn 
Resembling, midst the torture of the scene 
Love watching madness with unalterable mien." 

Another likens the Island to " Love in the clasp of madness," 
while Tom Moore, who gazed at it from across the gorge in 
1804, makes the Spirit say: 

" There amidst the island's sedge 
Just above the Cataract's edge 
Where the foot of living man 
Never trod since time began," 

which was poetic, but not founded on fact. 
And still another wrote of 

" The isle that linked in wild Niagara's firm embrace, 
Still wears the smile of summer on its face." 



ITS OWNERS. 

The ownership of the islands may be summarized as follows: 

The Aborigines — 1600 

The Neuters 1600-1651 

The Senecas 1651-1764 

Sir William Johnson 1764 

The English Crown 1764-1783 

State of New York 1783-1816 

The Porters 1816-1885 

State of New York .1885-1900 



ITS LITERATURE. 

Much has been written about Niagara by thousands. Its 
description has been attempted by many who are well known in 
the literature of the world; and by many more who are unknown. 
The shortest, perhaps the most eloquent, probably the most sug- 
gestive, certainly the most non-descriptive description of Niagara 
ever penned was that by Fanny Kemble, whose journal tells of 
her approach to the brink of the abyss and closes with the words, 

" I saw Niagara, 
O God! who can describe that sight." 

But while much has thus been written, a great deal of prose 
that is worth reading and a very little poetry that is worth re- 
membering, it is of Niagara as a whole, as a unit, in its gener- 
ality, in its comprehensiveness; treating the water, the Falls, 
the rapids, the gorge, the sky line of the river as seen from the 
brink of the Horseshoe, the spray, the rainbow, and the islands 
are component parts of one absorbing whole, that almost all 
writers treated it. 

Some of them specially mention Goat Island; others, and they 
are in the vast majority, refer to it only as an incident. Neither 
Goat Island nor even Niagara Falls have ever elicited a strong 
poem from any poet of the first rank. 

Some men, like Dore', have pictured Niagara without ever hav- 
ing seen it; some men, like Brainard, have written poetic effu- 
sions about it without ever having gazed upon it; but no im- 
portant description of Niagara has ever been penned by one who 
has never gazed upon it and who has not known the sensation 
occasioned by the first view thereof; and certainly no one has 
ever written anything about Goat Island who has not visited 
it, studied it in all its varied aspects, and been held enthralled 
by its spell. 



ITS VISITORS. 

Perhaps no one spot in the world has been visited during the 
last four score years by so many people, of both sexes, of so 
many varied occupations and of so many nationalities, as Goat 
Island. 

Lovers of nature and of its unique and glorious scenery, trav- 
ellers and tourists, scientists and artists, writers of prose and 
of poetry, divines and lawyers are numbered among its admireFS 
and students. 

Potentates and princes, rulers and statesmen, warriors and 
diplomats, adventurers and mountebanks and the leaders in every 
branch of science, knowledge and art have trod its paths. 

And from its associations many of these have drawn inspira- 
tions that led them to higher and nobler aims. But in antith- 
esis, from its edges men and women have leaped to self- 
destruction, while others have profaned its sanctity by availing 
themselves of the chances afforded by its solitude for murder. 



ITS PROPOSED USES. 

Many are the uses to which the ingenuity of man has, during 
the past 90 years, desired to turn the Island. 

It was desired originally for a sheep pen. 

The State Legislature designed to use it for a State prison or 
a State arsenal. 

Lafayette as well as many others would have liked to have it 
for a residence park. 

P. T. Barnum wanted to buy it for a circus ground. 



52 Goat Island. 

Cornelius Vanderbilt, Sr., tried to buy it for use as a pleasure 
ground in connection with his railroads. 

Jim Fiske wanted it for use as a picnic ground and as a ter- 
minal of the Erie railroad. 

And among the many propositions which were made to its 
owners for its use were, as the site of a mammoth hotel, as a race 
track, as a botanical garden, as a rifle range, and as a site for a 
collection of manufacturies to be located along the shores of the 
Island and the power to be furnished by running tall piers out 
into the river and thus collecting the waters; and again by cutting 
a canal through the center of the Island from east to west and 
locating the factories along its banks. 

DeWitt Clinton in 1810, noted its value for hydraulic works, 
and that use was suggested oftener than any other until the 
establishment of the State Reservation in 1885. And ever since 
then, plans have been urged with this object in view; some men 
seeming to be unable to realize (when they think they see a dollar 
for themselves) that the State's purchase was for the sole purpose 
of forever retaining the natural scenery, which private owners 
had happily preserved. 



ADDENDA. 

To give, even partially, reproductions of the best views from the 
Island would be to add so many illustrations of the scenery at 
Niagara, as to too greatly enlarge the bulk of this article. Hence, 
practically no views of the many sided modern scenery as seen 
from Goat Island have been reproduced. 

In 1889 a hurricane blew down many trees on Goat Island, 
among them the Botanic " Monarch of the Isle," a cross section 




^3'jm^mmmm&m 



iP^^'j^f'*' a 



The Botanic Monarch of the Isle. 



Goat Island. 53 

of whose trunk may be seen at the Niagara Falls Public Library. 
On it is inscribed: "I grew on Goat Island, and for over 400 
years, stood sentinel over its Indian graves. I was a sturdy sap- 
ling when Columbus landed at San Salvador. I was 150 years 
old when the first white man gazed upon Niagara. I saw and 
knew this first white man, but cannot reveal his name. I was 
over 200 years old when La Salle and Hennepin visited Niagara. 
I was blown down in 1889, the oldest and largest tree within 
the sound of Niagara's roar." 

On Luna Island is an embedded rock, whose top projects above 
the surface, and on this many years ago a cunning hand carved 
the words, still decipherable, 

"All Is change 

Eternal progress 
No death." 

Who carved them no one knows, and where he lies entombed 
is a mystery; but here, in full view of thousands of annual visit- 
ors, stands his epitaph, and the ceaseless roar of Niagara sings 
his everlasting requiem. 

In regard to all of Nature's handiwork, there are always men 
who think that certain parts of it would have been more effect- 
ively and better done if they could only have been consulted 
about it, and the case of Goat Island is no exception. 

Perhaps one of the least objectionably worded of such criticisms 
on Goat Island, which is conceded to be one of the loveliest and 
grandest spots on earth, was written less than 40 years ago, in 
these words: 

"It would be considered rather presumptious in any one to 
think of improving upon Niagara, but I cannot help thinking that 
the effect would be increased immensely if the island which 
divides the cataract into the Horse Shoe and the American Falls 



54 Goat Island. 

and the rock which juts up in the latter and subdivides it un- 
equally, were moved or did not exist; then the river, in one grand 
front of over 1,000 yards, would make the leap en masse." 

Fortunately the idea is now impracticable, and Goat Island 
exists because such is the will of the Creator. 

Goat Isalnd and Niagara, for they are synonymous terms, once 
seen can never be forgotten, nor will the influences derived from 
a leisurely visit to them ever be entirely lost. 

Their impression on an appreciative mind was beautifully ex- 
pressed many years ago, in the following poetic prose: 

" Niagara, when once we become acquainted with it, is capable 
of exercising a strange power of fascination over the mind; and 
the imaginative individual should not be surprised if he find 
mere water, earth and air, changing in its conceptions, into a 
creature of life. No wonder that the savages adored it, and 
peopled it with invisible beings, and imagined it the abode of the 
Great Spirit. With me it will always remain a vision of beauty, 
closely associated with that glory with which, in my notion, I 
shadow and imagine the Supreme. I loved it as a fellow; I left 
it with regret. Its form still lingers before my eyes, its rushing 
voices still hymn in my ears. And often still, sleeping or waking 
am I, in heart, among the cedars of Iris Island." 




Ice Scenery. Cave of the Winds. Winter 1896. 



ORIGINAL SKETCHES 



C. Breckinridge Porter. 






•V*. 










an ' 




"•S &■*.- fVSlWiS' 




*!«**Ji. 



' 







The Great Spirit op Niagara. 



.-.-■ 



4- 

_ 



'An Island, Hollow Underneath." 



.... .":. 

-V"' 



' 



m. 



.' 



mm '" 



Odd Terrapin Tower. 




Sam. Patch's Leap. 1829. 






""V., '' 



t<& 




r-i 






^^^ ^z«r - , i* **-jl 



When Niagara Ran Dry, March 29, 1848. 



&. 



SEP 28 1900 



LbJa'16 



